Obama Embarrasses Himself, and Us, Again

I thought Barack Obama couldn’t sink lower than he did in his apology tour of Europe. I was wrong.

Now it’s Latin America, where Obama is attending the Summit of the Americas. While he doesn’t seem to have actually bowed to anyone in Trinidad, he has adopted a submissive posture at every opportunity, telling Latin America’s leaders that he “has a lot to learn.” I’m afraid that’s truer than Obama knows.

One can only speculate as to what was running through Hugo Chavez’s mind when Obama humiliated himself by posing for this photo:

We know, though, how Chavez responded to Obama’s plaintive confession that he “has a lot to learn”–he contributed to Obama’s education by pressing upon him, before the cameras, a book by a Uruguyan leftist named Eduardo Galeano:

The book’s title translates as The Open Veins of Latin America; the subtitle is Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Here is how Wikipedia describes it:

In this book, he analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole from the time period of European contact with the New World to contemporary Latin America arguing against what he views as European and later U.S. economic exploitation and political dominance over the region. … It is a classic among the left of Latin America.

You can get a sense of Galeano’s mindless anti-Americanism in this interview.

So, how did Obama react to Chavez’s insult–an insult, we should note, both to Obama himself and to the nation of which he is, for better or worse, President? With his usual cluelessness:

When a reporter asked Obama what he thought of the book, the president replied: “I thought it was one of Chavez’s books. I was going to give him one of mine.” White House advisers said they didn’t know if Obama would read it or not. [Ed.: Not likely, since it’s in Spanish.]

When asked what he thought of Obama, Chavez replied:

“I think it was a good moment,” Chavez said about their initial encounter. “I think President Obama is an intelligent man, compared to the previous U.S. president.”

Obama soaks up this kind of back-handed “compliment,” which is intended as an insult to the United States and is understood as such by everyone other than, apparently, our President, like a sponge.

The next Latin American lefty to treat our President like a hey-boy was Danny Ortega. After receiving Obama’s homage, Ortega:

…delivered a blistering 50-minute speech that denounced capitalism and U.S. imperialism as the root of much hemispheric mischief. The address even recalled the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, though Ortega said the new U.S. president could not be held to account for that.

Once again, Obama assumed the position:

“I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old,” Obama said, to laughter and applause from the other leaders.

Yes, like trying–albeit not hard enough–to liberate Cuba from Communist dictatorship. Does Obama really not understand that hostile foreign leaders are making a fool of him and of the country he purports to lead? Apparently not. I don’t think Barack Obama is a stupid man, but he is in so far over his head that every time he ventures onto the international stage he not only embarrasses himself–and us–he damages, if ever so slightly, our national security.

PAUL adds: President Obama should feel quite comfortable with the writings of Eduardo Galeano and the ranting of Danny Ortega. He heard this sort of anti-American rubbish from his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. It didn’t bother him then and it doesn’t seem to bother him now..